Opyr, Tamaki, Pratt, Pope et al, Vandermeer, and a bonus level

Joan Opyr — Shaken and Stirred

July 16

Okay, I picked this up at the Title Wave on spec because the cover was kind of unbelievable. Somehow, and for some reason, the publisher (a small-timer out of Michigan focused on contemporary lesbian fiction) had gotten the printer to cover it with, uh... I don't know the proper term for it, but, alpine flower guide / field first-aid manual cover stock. The really plasticky, resilient stuff with a grid of little nubbins on it to give it a more matte feel except they're too big for matte so it just feels like plastic with a grid of nubbins? Y... you know??? Okay, I'm gonna just assume you know — who the hell puts that shit on a novel?! I HAD TO FIND OUT.

Well, it turned out to be a pretty good read. I give it three-ish stars, because I feel like the ending didn't really come together, but I enjoyed the middle of the book quite a bit. A witty and wistful story about a gal going home to bury her shitheel grandpa, which closes with a romance ending that really could have used some additional reinforcement.

Jillian Tamaki — SuperMutant Magic Academy

July 19. Comics.

This ruled, go get it.

I was mildly bummed that I hadn't known about Tamaki's webcomic until it was done, but also excited about getting a big airdrop of cool stuff all at once.

The tone is very different from her novelistic work. It's insistently a comedy, but it veers between comedic modes very fluidly. The Everlasting Boy interludes tend toward this violent, gonzo physical/metaphysical absurdity; the stuff with the core cast (Marsha, Wendy, Gemma, Frances, Cheddar) moves in and out of Peanuts-esque wry melancholy, situational gags, Gunshow-esque left turns, and more. The out-of-continuity strips with one-off characters are... I dunno what you'd even call this, but I love it.

My original plan for this review was to close with a gag about The Magicians, but I couldn't quite make it work, so never mind.

Hugo Pratt — Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea

Aug 22 (comics)

So, Corto Maltese is this ancient Eurocomics property, which my memory is a little hazy on the details of; I think he outlived his maker like a louche, chain-smoking Mickey Mouse and you still get new animated features dropping once in a while, but I'm not positive.

I think this book was his first outing, and damn it shows. It's rough as hell, it wanders all over the place, it insistently refuses to cohere. It was only translated recently, and as far as I can tell the English availability of the rest of the comics is spotty at best.

Anyway, this volume included way more than its fair share of high colonialist bullshit, and the story's not solid enough that I could recommend it to anyone. I'd be interested to see a later adventure and find out how much it improves, because god damn is Corto himself enjoyable to look at. What a fuckin beautiful character design.

Paul Pope, JT Petty, and David Rubin — The Rise of Aurora West

August 22. Comics.

This was weird and intriguing. I'm not entirely sure it's for me, but... there's something in there that I can't let go of.

Jeff Vandermeer - Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance (the Southern Reach trilogy)

Aug 24, 25, 26

This was creepy as hell and I enjoyed it a lot. More to the point, it managed to achieve a satisfying resolution without ruining the mysteries and incomprehensibilities that drive the story, which is what I always worry about when getting into this sort of thing. (I get paranoid whenever I catch a whiff of that old Lost scent, you know?)

Top-notch weird horror. If you're into this sort of thing at all, this is the real deal.

Bonus Level: Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

Aug. something (video game; ipad version)

An old favorite of mine from back in the Playstation 1 days; it was remastered and retranslated for the PSP some years back, and they later ported that port to iOS.

Back in the ’90s, FFT was notorious for its shit translation; it was arguably the pinnacle of a certain form of incomprehensible Engrish in video games. If you never experienced it for yourself, it's worth checking out some of the greatest hits of dialogue from that monster, just to see how far we've come.

But by the end of the PS1 era, at least some parts of Square had corrected course, because Vagrant Story was pretty much the high-water mark of ja->en translations for that whole console generation. They were aiming for this sort of retro-Elizabethan gruffness, vaguely Shakespearean diction but with the sub-frame lopped off and the tailpipes wrapped in insulating tape, and — improbably — it worked great. So when it came time to rehabilitate FFT, the translators turned to Vagrant Story and its late-PS2-era successor Final Fantasy XII for guidance.

And the result is excellent. I actually kind of respect this game for its story, now!

The original script was functional (albeit comical) for its first three chapters, but chapter four was basically unreadable; I don't think I knew anyone who really understood what was going on with the Zodiac Braves, Saint Ajora, or even the late-stage political machinations.

But now that the incidental confusion has been brushed away, the remaining confusion improves the story. I originally thought there was supposed to be a single Church cover-up about Ajora and the braves, but in the new translation, it's clear that there have been multiple revisions of history, every one of them performed in ignorance of some incredibly crucial information lost in the last pass. The result is that history in Ivalice is complete garbage by now, and even people who think they've found the master key to the real truth have no idea what's going on. The (allegedly bombshell) secret scriptures Simon gives to Ramza seem to imply the opposite of what you're actually encountering, and even the Lucavi seem confused about some of what the Auracite can do.

I like that a lot better than my original interpretation of what was happening. It casts the Church in a much more interesting light, and it adds a certain melancholy to the proceedings; even whoever recovers the Durai papers won't be able to figure out what the hell Ramza and company were actually up to, much less whatever the fuck went down back in the airship era.